Wednesday, April 25, 2012

How many billions of dollars has all the damaging and unethical high stakes testing of children cost states and the Federal government over the past 25 years? Not nearly as much a Pearson, CBT/McGraw-Hill, and SAS are planning for in the coming generation of year-round testing in every subject, as they plan to make the status quo permanent.

Another figure we know for sure is that Knoxville's Supt. Jim McIntyre, who has recently been pitching his plan for a $35 million budget increase to fund bonus pay for test scores, will send Pearson 4 million Knox County taxpayer dollars this spring to cover security costs for the TCAP state tests.

Meanwhile, a national boycott of Pearson will be announced this coming Saturday at United Opt Out. With profits up 72 percent in 2011, Pearson offers a global exemplar of greed combined with ineptitude and corruption.

And Pearson's screw-ups just keep on coming. Question is: who will pay analyzing Pearson's errors? I think we know the answer to that one.

As math exams for the state’s fourth to eighth graders begin on
Wednesday, new controversy emerged about the quality of the exams and
choices of the exam-maker, Pearson Education.

The Daily News reports that questions have been raised about another passage on the English exams — this one involving a talking yam.

The state’s fourth-grade reading test included an African
folk tale about a talking yam, even though versions of the story
appeared in test prep books used in city schools, the Daily News has
learned.
While the passage isn’t confusing like one about a talking pineapple
yanked from the tests last week, critics charge that using a
listening-comprehension passage that was required reading at some
schools offered an unfair edge to those students.

“That’s very lazy and sloppy on the part of the testing company,”
said education historian Diane Ravitch. “Two big mistakes of this kind —
the talking pineapple and the talking yam — makes a strong argument for
public release of all the test questions.”

The News also reported that the state had already found problems with the math exams, even before they have been administered.

On the eighth grade test, one question had no correct answer, and schools are instructed to alert students.

And on the fourth grade exam, one question has two correct answers.
But in this case, schools are directed to tell students about the
problem only if they ask questions about the item.

And Gotham Schools said the math errors were feeding into mounting criticism of the exams and of Pearson:

The admission comes on top of the embarrassing revelation
that the state’s eighth-grade reading test included a revised and
seemingly nonsensical literary passage whose moral was “pineapples don’t
wear sleeves.” Together, the episodes have raised concerns about
Pearson, the company that is in the first year of a five-year, $32
million contract to produce tests for New York State.

A spokesman for the department said the mistakes amounted only to
typographical errors. But critics of the state’s testing program say the
state is holding Pearson to a lower standard than it holds students.
“If our children make errors on these high-stakes exams, this will
have negative consequences for them, as well as for their teachers and
schools,” said Leonie Haimson, the parent activist who brought attention
to the “Pineapple” story, in a statement. “So why should Pearson, which
had nearly $2 billion in profits last year, be left off the hook for
their sloppy mistakes?”

Also on the testing front, SchoolBook’s Beth Fertig reported
that principals are worried that new rules that require them to pay for
their teachers to score the standardized exams — during school hours —
is costing them thousands of dollars that they don’t have in these
austere times.

“I have five teachers missing three weeks of their teaching
responsibilities, which has to hurt student performance in the long
run,” a Bronx principal said.

Gotham Schools
used the occasion of Schools Chancellor Dennis M. Walcott’s visit to
the Mayor’s Young Men’s Initiative Summit to update the status of Mayor
Michael R. Bloomberg’s $130 million program to focus attention on about
315,000 young black and Latino men in New York “who are
disproportionately undereducated, incarcerated and unemployed.” The
initiative was announced last summer by Mr. Bloomberg.

Walcott stopped by the day-long summit to represent the
Department of Education, which is leading up the Expanded Success
Initiative, one of several prongs of the Bloomberg administration’s
Young Men’s Initiative. At a cost of $24 million, the project will bring
researchers into schools that are succeeding with male students of
color. But nearly nine months after it was announced, the department
still hasn’t picked which schools to show off.

The city has assembled a shortlist of 81 eligible schools and will by
the end of May pick 40 who want to participate — and receive a $250,000
bonus. To be eligible, a school must have a four-year graduation rate
above 65 percent, an A or B on its most recent progress report, and a
student body where at least 35 percent are black or Latino males and 60
percent are qualified for free or reduced-price lunch. It must also
promise to implement even more aggressive strategies to help black and
Latino male students.

The Gotham post included a list of the schools that are eligible for
the new study. It also reported one exchange between Mr. Walcott and a
participant:

Walcott championed the notion of system-wide
collaboration during the question-and-answer session, after one attendee
raised a question central to the Young Men’s Initiative: How will the
city make a long-term impact on the grim college readiness rate for
black and Latino students, which hovers around 13 percent?

“It’s really great that we’ve raised this million dollars for this
mentoring,” the speaker said, “but who is looking at this as an entire
system, so that in ten years we’re not back looking at how we’re going
to spend a million dollars to save a generation of kids?”

“Your question is right on. It’s a collective effort of the
Department of Education, the people on the stage, and the people here in
the audience as far as working together,” Walcott said. “Through the
Expanded Success Initiative we are identifying schools that have done
the job well, particularly with black and Latino males, and black and
Latino students, and replicating that success in other schools.”

One other bit of education news: Diane Ravitch, the New York
University education professor and historian, started her own blog on
Tuesday. As Gotham reported via Twitter, Ms. Ravitch realized that,
rather than continuing to use Twitter as her 140-character-per-post
outlet, she would create her own blog, which was unveiled on Tuesday
with a cascade of posts. You can find it at dianeravitch.net.

As the state math exams for fourth to eighth graders begin on
Wednesday — and continue through Friday — a Brooklyn group has organized
a discussion of “High Stakes Testing” for Wednesday.

PS 261 Unite, an organization of parents, teachers and community
members, will present a panel discussion and Q & A session at 6:30
p.m. in the Public School 261 Philip Livingston
auditorium, 314 Pacific Street, Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. Panelists
include Zipporiah Mills, P.S. 261′s principal; Diana Zavala, a parent,
speech therapist, former teacher and member of the CHANGE THE STAKES
campaign; Sam Coleman, a dual language teacher at P.S. 24; and Peg Tyre,
a journalist, author and friend of SchoolBook. The event is free.